BEN TILLETT COMING TO NEW ZEALAND.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 3, 5 January 1897, Page 5

BEN TILLETT COMING TO NEW ZEALAND.

[PBESS ASSOCIATION.] (Received January 5, 9.40 a.m.) London, 4th January. Mr. Ben Tillett, labour leader, is suffering ill-health, and sailed by the Aotea for New Zealand. Mr. Tillett, who has made his mark as a Labour leader and as an Alderman of the County of London, was born at Bristol in 1859, and went to work in a brickyard before he was eight years oU. At 12 he was for six months " boy" on board a fishing-smack. After being apprenticed to a bootmaker he ran away to sea, joined the Navy, and after a short period of service was discharged invalided. Subsequently he shipped in merchant vessels, and went several voyages. He then settled in the midst of the London docks, and began to form the Dockers' Union among the dock labourers, who were then the most wretched and ill-paid of unskilled labourers. During the great dock strike he worked energetically and successfully as an organiser of his Union, which is now large and prosperous. " Ben" Tillett is a ready speaker of the demagogue type. At the general election of 1892 he stood for West Bradford, but was beaten by a Liberal and a Conservative, though he polled a large number of votes. He was tried at Bristol in the earlier part of 1893 on the charge of inciting to riot, but was acquitted. He has given important evideuce before the Parliamentary Commission on Pauper Immigration, and before the Lords' Committee on Sweating. During the close of 1894 and beginning of 1895, he defended himself in The Times against the severe strictures of Mr. W. H. Mallock, who accused him in effect of complete ignorance of Economics.